by Helen Ivory | May 17, 2024 | Featured, Poetry
Amphibian Land has dried its eyes, grown hard hands and interrogates each arrival: Where are you from, really from? Are you skinlight, sunhatched, from beyond the serried trees? Answer these. The borders are closing. I wear a different skin,...
by Helen Ivory | May 16, 2024 | Featured, Poetry
Losing It after Yehuda Amichai If we think we are right the sun may never set; if we know we are right then beasts could take our place; if we say we are right the towers will always fall; and if, after all after all we’ve thought, known,...
by Helen Ivory | May 15, 2024 | Featured, Poetry
Things I did then that I hadn’t done before Asked the neighbours if they wanted anything in my online weekly shop and Bought yeast, flour, long-life milk and 70-per-cent-alcohol hand sanitiser and Cut my own hair, even the bits round the back I...
by Helen Ivory | May 12, 2024 | Featured, Poetry
Quiet, Elizabeth Elizabeth is hiding in the cupboard under the sink Small enough to fold between cream cleaner and floor polish Too big to keep elbows away from wire wool Knees away from the slick puddle of the U bend Nose away from the liquitab...
by Helen Ivory | May 10, 2024 | Featured, Poetry
Acts of Repair Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete? (Tupac Shakur) You wouldn’t believe how quick they grew — Our babies were men now. Lifting bags of concrete they rebuilt cities, slab by slab, reinforcing cracks....
by Helen Ivory | May 9, 2024 | Featured, Poetry
The Scorpion and the Egg I’d asked for this not to be recorded; this failure on my part, to be a good parent; this failure over the egg, my handing him a scorpion instead, my thoughtlessness. How can I explain that my mind was elsewhere?...
